


Faithful in Her Fashion

by Irrealia



Series: Awake, Arise, or Be Forever Fallen [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Promiscuity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:15:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irrealia/pseuds/Irrealia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose in Pete's World, doing a different kind of reality jumping. Post-Doomsday with wee references to Turn Left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faithful in Her Fashion

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I've written any fic in years, and the first time for this fandom. The incredible Poose (who doesn't write DW fic, but knows the show) gave it a once-over, but I take responsibility for any and all mistakes!

_I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,_  
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,  
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;  
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,  
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:  
I have been faithful to thee Cynara! in my fashion.  
-Ernest Dowson, "Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae"

At first, right after Canary Wharf, she doesn't want to be touched at all. Every touch reminds her of the hand that failed to catch her, the hand she'd held a thousand times before and would never hold again. Every time someone took her hand it was as if her whole body sighed and relaxed—for a moment, until she realized she wasn't holding HIS hand, and she would remember what had happened all over again. She wears jumpers with too-long sleeves, chunky knit armwarmers, or heavy leather gloves whenever possible. Fortunately, the rough field work she does for Torchwood often justifies her new-found penchant for hand protection.

Then comes Bad Wolf Bay and he's burning up a sun to say goodbye, and talking to just his picture makes her realize how hungry for touch she has become. Starving. She resolves to hug her family more often, and in the process accidentally convinces Jackie and Pete that she's back from the realm of the walking dead. "'S fine," she thinks, "might as well have someone 'round here happy." Nonetheless, her conscience twitches for lying to her family. She takes advantage of Tony's infancy to snuggle her new little brother with a sincerity and lack of bitterness that she can't quite display for any adult. She creeps out of her shell at work and "comrades" turn into "mates" who kiss her hello on the cheek and hug her goodbye.

She needs more.

Some of the "mates" turn into "lovers," and it's brilliant, it's just what she wants. Fucking her way through Torchwood in the afterglow of successful missions is almost like being with the Doctor, tumbling into the TARDIS so drunk on the rush of saving planets and not dying that they feel giddy and immortal, falling into bed and rutting until the adrenaline high is gone, replaced by the delicious, opium-like drifting feeling of straight-up oxytocin. The company is different, but the neurochemistry is the same and as delicious as ever.

Unfortunately, Rose learns the hard way that you can only shag someone so many times before they start thinking it means something more than the primal need for contact. Because it's Rose, and she loves the Doctor, it can't ever mean something more. But because it's Rose, she lets them down gently. "You're lovely, really," she tells them, "and I don't ordinarily do this, uh... this. It was just... aliens, you know. I mean, not that they made me do it but we fought them and we didn't die, yeah? And you've got all that adrenaline and it has to go somewhere and cor, I'm sorry. This is awful. I'm awful. I'll understand if you never want to see me again. Really I will."

She stops tumbling into bed with coworkers when Mickey tells her they're starting to call her the department bicycle (everyone's had a ride). She wouldn't mind the reputation for her own sake. If anything, might make it easier for her to fuck when the mood takes her and laugh it off after. Keep people from thinking she might be inclined to care; spare her the speeches. But Pete's been better to her than she ever had any right to expect, and it wouldn't do for rumours like that to be going 'round about the boss's daughter.

The days get easier, but the nights are always his—whoever he turns out to be this time. She keeps condoms and lube stashed in her bag, right next to her handgun, and she lurks in bars and hotel lobbies, waiting for other, more dangerous and safer chances. Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, is never unprepared. The Doctor began her education in dealing affably with the unfamiliar. Torchwood has only honed her ability to read people (broadly defined), to become whatever they need her to be in the moment, whatever will get the job done. She's mastered the art of projecting "warm and approachable," and she can crank up her natural charm when she needs to—like when the right sort of bloke sends her a drink.

"The right sort of bloke" is invariably tall, thin as a rail, well dressed, well coiffed. A little painfully Anglo. A professorial touch never goes amiss. Smart. Cocky. Verbal. Witty. It's a highly specific type, Rose acknowledges, and yet there's more of them than you'd think. She fucks them in pub toilets or slightly frightening little hotels that let rooms by the hour. She likes it missionary, not because she's unimaginative or prudish, but because she likes the full skin to skin contact, the two bodies moving as one, legs spread wide and open and wrapped around slender hips and arse, strong arms looped around fragile ribcages. Fucking like this is the most any two people can touch, she thinks. A hug outside and in. Sometimes she opens her eyes and bores straight into the man of the evening's face, as if directly facing the fact that this isn't him will somehow make her more faithless to his memory, will make what she's doing more an act of pleasure, and less a kind of mourning.

And then sometimes she closes her eyes because the cologne smells almost right and his hair pomade feels tacky under her fingers just so and her other hand is tugging the heavy silk of a tie, bringing him down for a kiss. Merino suiting rubs against her bare shoulders in a dreadfully familiar wooly fashion, and she can't bring herself to ruin the illusion.

She never tells any of them her name. The wrong word, in the wrong place, can change an entire causal nexus. She just keeps moving on, from elusive reality to illusive reality, waiting for someone to take her open hand.


End file.
